


I stand again in leaden rain

by Rori



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Chuck Hansen is a Brat, Drift Bond, Edge of Tomorrow AU, Ghost Drifting, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Post-Knifehead (Pacific Rim), Time Loop, Yancy Becket Lives, but I love him anyway, the one where Yancy is stuck in a time loop
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:08:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24431860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rori/pseuds/Rori
Summary: If you could do it all again, would you do it all the same?
Relationships: Raleigh Becket & Yancy Becket, Yancy Becket/Chuck Hansen
Comments: 1
Kudos: 26





	1. I might hate myself tomorrow but I'm on my way tonight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [YahtoMingan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YahtoMingan/gifts).



> I said I was gonna do it. It's not your birthday (yet), but still; it was a promise.
> 
> Title is from Walt Whitman's Patriotic Poems.  
> Chapter titles are from Avicii's song Lonely Together.

Hot Kaiju blood splatters all over his helmet and its intoxicating fumes burn his nostrils as Yancy breathes in, enraged. His brother is yelling at him, calling his name, but he can’t quite hear him through the heavy bellowing of the thunder and the sea - Knifehead sinks beneath its angry waves, and _that_ he understands.

‘We got him good,’ he snorts, winded and helplessly riding the familiar high that follows a kill;

his breath fogs a little inside the helmet, and his voice is raspy, low, like their mom’s after the doctors had removed the tumor from her throat.

The pink scar on her skin had looked like a second smile, a very badly drawn one sprawled lazily just a few inches above her sternum - Yancy breathes in, breathes out, pushing the memories out of his mind, focusing on every painful intake of air through the Kaiju blood fumes. His lungs are filled with saltwater, his throat is sore and hurting.

 _Good_.

Pain would ground him long enough for them to reach the coast if they ultimately couldn’t make it back to the Anchorage Shatterdome. Over the coms, Pentecost isn’t as ecstatic as they are. Yancy can feel and genuinely shares Raleigh’s swelling pride as his brother answers the Marshall, the words echoing deep in his mind through the bond their share.

‘Job's done, sir. Lit it up twice,’ Raleigh announces over the coms, and Yancy can almost hear Pentecost seething. ‘Bagged our fifth kill.’

‘ _You disobeyed a_ direct _order!_ ‘

‘We did _good_ ,’ Yancy snarls, cutting in before this got uglier. There’s a slight tremor in his voice thanks to that fucking blue blood, but still he adds the respectful, ‘Sir’, that his brother can’t manage at the moment.

‘ _Get back to your post, now!_ ’

‘Yes, Sir,’ Raleigh mutters with a careless, idiotic smile; he is already pushing buttons, running diagnostic to assess the visible and invisible damages.

Yancy’s half of the cockpit had been cracked opened like an egg and was letting the icy rain in; one of the wrists had been damaged as well, something in the circuitry, and their left arm had definitely seen better days, but the fishermen were alive and the miracle mile had not been breached. He hears the faint static of the coms coming alive, hears it too late - except it isn’t Tendo congratulating them on their fifth kill. It’s the Marshal.

‘Grab the boat, and get out of there,’ he hammers in simple words, his unwavering calm drowned by his own undiluted panic and LOCCENT’s panicked background shouts. ‘Grab the boat and get out of there now!’ Pentecost stresses again, his grip tight on the mic.

The screens flicker alive again, but not nearly quick enough - the massive carcass of Knifehead comes out of the swirling dark waves of the ocean, and his long bony nose pierces through their left shoulder like a bullet. Yancy feels a sharp, electric tingle go through him. His cry of pain is muffled by Raleigh’s whose arm goes limp against his body, whose pain is pushed down the bond to be shared as one; the amputated left arm of the Gypsy falls and sinks beneath the surface, lost, one Plasma Cannon with it -

Yancy staggers through the pain, reminds them both that his side is intact and that they do have a second fucking canon there; Raleigh holds his breath, contains his pain and they _have_ to try -

‘It went through the hull!’

Yancy is swiftly ripped off the cockpit, his last words dying on his lips as he’s hurled into the ocean with the metallic debris that had fallen with him. The ocean is cold and rages all around him, pushes into his broken helmet - there’s a flash of white-blue light that burns his eyes, or maybe that’s the salt, or maybe it’s just because he is drowning.

Yancy swallows liters of heavy saltwater as he gasps hungrily for air; he flails uselessly, trying to distinguish up from down but never quite able to reach the surface when he finally finds it. He dies, feeling every bit of his own terror and agony reflected through the bond he still shares with his brother, even half-drowned.

Except this same brother wakes him up, about three hours earlier.

.

‘Yancy - _Yance!_ Wake up, time to go,’ Raleigh is drumming his hands on the bed, on his face, yapping at him like a happy puppy for the third 29th of February in a row.

He can’t help but sigh - what had been endearing once was starting to become annoying. ‘Mornin',’ Yancy says anyway, waiting for the rest of his brother’s lines to roll out.

‘Big ass category III, heading our way, will reach the Miracle Line in about an hour,’ he summed up breathlessly, hastily throwing on a shirt.

Yancy gets up, gets dressed, going through the motions like it’s a well-timed dance; they learned that at the Academy, how to feel the rhythm, go with the flow, and maybe it’s what allowed him and Raleigh to make it through the first cut. Most of the other trainees had dismissed it as a girly thing, a useless thing when the world needed them to be brutal fighters rather than delicate snowflakes. Their ‘dance’ instructor had been a retired pilot (‘back when piloting meant _planes_ , not the fucking _Power Rangers’ Megazord_ ’) with a fancy prosthetic feet, who swore a lot and in Spanish.

Raleigh snaps at him to wake up as they enter the boarding area; snaps his fingers right in front of his eyes, but it does nothing to dissipate the haze that clouds Yancy’s mind.

‘Stop that,’ he forces himself to say with a smile, even going as far as chuckling a little when he bats Raleigh’s hand away from his face.

‘Feeling tired, _old man_ ,’ his brother teases him, overeager as always, blissfully unaware of what is going to happen; because Raleigh, like the rest of the mission control guys, doesn’t _know_.

‘Watch it, kid,’ he snaps right back, a cold sweat breaking on his neck - _third time’s a charm_ , he almost whispers as they are about to initiate the Neural Handshake.

‘Remember: clear mind, clean mission. Let’s do this,’ Raleigh assures him, settling easily into what Tendo had dubbed his pilot persona.

Except Yancy’s mind was not clear at all - the ghost-like feeling of losing his arm _again_ scares him deeply, even if that pain had been all Raleigh and not his. _Gotta thank the Neural fucking Bridge for that_ , Yancy thought, rubbing absently at his left shoulder. He doesn’t know what the fuck is happening to him, but he sure as hell ain’t gonna let a category III Kaiju waltz into Alaska without a fight.

And this time, Yancy will make sure they get him _good_.

.

It happens again, and again, exactly the same.

It doesn’t matter how much prepared Yancy thinks he is; it is not _enough_ , not even the third or fourth time, not even when he empties the whole clip into Knifehead’s slimy throat. What was once uncomplicated becomes hard, and heavy. Yancy isn’t so sure anymore that Gypsy can walk through a storm and come out unscathed, not when Kaiju claws can break through the hull so easily, so relentlessly. He feels it grow in the pit of his stomach, the frustration, the fear even at his own utter uselessness - the blazing alarms that wake him up every morning are still ringing in his ears as they head out, as the bile takes up residency at the back of his tongue.

After a few loops, he doesn’t even try to hide anymore. He has died enough now that the taste and shape of water are vivid, intimate almost, its bite burned permanently in his lungs. Dying on repeat is fucking with his brain, slowly pushing him over the edge - the everyday fighting is wearing him down, enough now that his brother and him are no more as attuned to each other as they used to be. He closed his eyes to the raging of the sea, to the coldness of his embrace, only to open them at 2 am that exact same morning, hours earlier, everything back to the same.

_Take me back, -_

(On very rare occasions, Yancy didn’t wake up to the sound of alarm but to the steady beeps of the machines he’s hooked to - and he had hoped, at first, because if he has in the hospital then surely that meant the jumphawks had reached them in time? Yancy should have known better than to hope, than to think the world was still the kind, hopeful place it had once been - upon waking up, in of those versions of his new reality, he had rarely lost only his brother.)

_\- back to the start._

And with run Gypsy had become heavier, its blows sloppy and uncoordinated. Once, they’d landed their ass on the ocean floor, fully submerged, and Knifehead had used the opening to bash the cockpit in. The emergency pods were jammed - _they always were_ -, and the lights of the screens had started flickering dead as oxygen and energy had slowly run out. Raleigh’s helmet was cracked in multiple places, the fissures looking like spider webs and casting strange shadows on his terrified face. It had not taken long for the glass to actually shatter and let the water in; Yancy had watched helplessly as his brother inhaled water and shards of glass alike, his own lungs fine but not quite getting the memo that you couldn’t suffocate on _air_. The Drift did that for you.

He woke up that same morning with the acrid taste of salt in his mouth, and promptly threw up all over the floor.

.

Allowing the water in his throat isn’t becoming easy, but its salty taste is certainly more palatable with every new run; and when drowning isn’t what kill them, hypothermia is a close second. The jumphawks never quite manage to reach them in time, because of the thunderstorm fucking up their navigation. No amount of yelling made them faster. The flare gun ended up lost most of the time, depriving them of a reliable heat source. Raleigh survives most of the time but he’s the only one, and in the few runs where he doesn’t - well, let’s say Yancy learned a thing or two during those ones.

For one, suicide, apparently, doesn’t rig the nightmare he is trapped in.

When Yancy dies, the loop resets. It doesn’t matter how it’s done. It can be fast or slow, sweet or violent - he will always wake up alive earlier that same day. The same fucking day, over and over again, and Yancy relives it all: the sirens, the category III, the drowning.

His brother’s death.

The sickening motion of the sea.

_Over and over and over again -_

‘ _You are out of alignment, Gypsy!_ ’ Tendo’s panicked voice resonates through the com.

Yancy didn’t go to a fancy school, but he isn’t dumb either - his instructors had not called him gifted or a natural-born pilot for nothing.

He just figured he could spare the day.

He didn’t manage to completely let go, and follow the white rabbit to Wonderland - old habits die hard, and Yancy feels like he shouldn’t get used to it anyway. It felt a bit like faking sickness to skip school: a flimsy, childish solution to what turned out to be a very permanent kind of problem. Their father never did quite buy it, except when Jaz did it.

Fortunately, the PPDC isn’t quite as intuitive as dear old dad. Pentecost is hard to fool, but Yancy knows enough of the Marshal to be sure he won’t risk it, them, the billion-dollar giant robot they use to fight. Which means they’d rather deploy a Jaeger from the Los Angeles Shatterdome, all the way down from California, than let them go out with such a dangerously low alignment score. It costs them three or four hours, a few hundred thousand dollars worth of gas, and about fifteen thousand lives.

Yancy decides to never do that again. He waited a few days to confirm that his death (and his death only) triggered the reset, slept a few good nights, ate, and then promptly threw himself into the icy waters of the Northern Pacific Ocean.

The loop resets, and with it the horror.

.

Yancy wakes up to the soft, regular beeping sounds of the machine he’s tied to, miraculously intact: no lost arm, hand, foot or leg, this time. He feels the neat rows of stitches lining his face, and the heavy, cold tubes coiled around his throat. He does not waste any time looking for his brother; the ugly truth of yet another failure dawns upon him when he meets Tendo’s red-rimmed gaze - _again_ , he survived Knifehead, and _again_ , his brother didn’t.

They tell him the date, and it’s fucking _March_ , and Yancy decides he has had enough of dying on repeat.

.

‘Jaz,’ Yancy manages, but his sister’s name feels strangely hollow on his tongue.

He’s a failure in her eyes, the older boy that had come back without Raleigh, without their brother; her smile is tight-lipped and cold, her eyes red and she can’t help the tears that are running down her cheeks.

Yancy had not expected much else from her - almost a decade ago, Raleigh and him had left her alone with their uncle to enroll at the Jaeger Academy of Kodiak Island. It was Raleigh who had insisted, a few months after their mother had died, after their father had left, that they should try the drift compatibility test app on his battered Xbox One. Yancy had gone along, not expecting anything to come out of it, really. They were just kids from seaside Alaska, average at school, who spoke shitty French and had picked up a few German swear words while visiting Munich when they were younger - not really the poster children of the Resistance.

They had managed to become pilots anyway.

That’s why Raleigh’s soggy remains were being buried in the Anchorage Military Cemetery, which really meant that his name would be carved in golden letters into the smooth white stone of the PPDC Memorial while Yancy, Tendo, Pentecost and a few soldiers lowered an almost empty coffin to the ground. They’d fire seven rounds to honor him, they’d light the pyre in the heavy silence that would come after. The State Governor of Alaska had solemnly called it ‘The Light of Remembrance’.

It sounded even more ridiculous out loud.

Tendo stood by him for the whole ceremony, his usual bow tie left at home. This girl, Alison, was with him, sobbing quietly at his side, holding his hand. Pentecost was there too, as well as most of the Gypsy’s technical crew and some guys Yancy recognized from LOCCENT. The Becket brothers had been part of the Anchorage active roaster for almost 3 years, long enough to make them legends to most and good friends to a few.

Yet, when everything was said and done, Yancy found himself alone, standing there on the neatly trimmed grass with his hands deep in his pockets. He wiped the tears off his face with his sleeves, because seeing your brother die countless times does not make you immune to his death, somehow - he feels angry, and sad, and other things that are harder to name.

‘It gets easier, with the years,’ offered Pentecost, his deep voice echoing in the silence; Yancy looked up at him, at all the glinting medals covering his torso, at the two teenagers waiting for him just a few paces away.

‘I’ll find him in the Drift,’ Yancy finally answered, his voice tight, barely refraining a sob; the phantom presence of his brother is burning his insides like nothing else ever did. He’s gone, and that’s a wound that cut him deeper than any other ever had. ‘You will,’ the Marshal reassures him, his strong hand clasping his shoulder. ‘Take as long as you need, Mr. Becket. When you return, we will have a place for you at the Shatterdome.’

Yancy nods through his tears, and comes back two weeks later as the Gypsy’s amputated carcass is taken to Oblivion Bay, to rust in peace.

.

Yancy is gently dismissed from the Jaeger Program, with honors. They give him a medal; he hurls it into the sea not an hour later. Pentecost and several higher-ups put a nice word for him, so he finds himself with a handful of trainees on his hands and a full schedule that makes him run between the Shatterdome and the Academy multiple times a week. He doesn’t mind - it keeps him occupied enough that sometimes, for a few blessed seconds, Yancy is able to forget about the never-ending nightmare that his life has become.

When he can’t, he wakes up soaked in his own sweat, choking on absent water, reaching for a brother that has been gone for longer than he has been here; _just a little something to remember me by_ , the loop would say if it could speak. Raleigh still waits for him there, at the start of yet another run, and Yancy keeps telling himself that he’ll come back eventually, when he’s ready, when he has a _plan_ \- that their time will come, for sure.

And soon, it’s November - it’s his _birthday_ , for fuck’s sake.

‘Hey, you heard about the Hansen duo?’

‘Who didn’t,’ Yancy answered dismissively, focusing on his movements, trying to keep his breathing slow and controlled. This morning had been hard, harder than usual - he had woken up soaked in a cold sweat, still lost in the nightmarish memories of the previous runs, expecting the sirens to go off at any second.

But they didn’t - there was only silence. The dull ache of drowning along with Raleigh had left him uneasy, choking on air instead of saltwater. It had tasted all the same - _bad bitch ghost drifting, eh_ , he’d told the doc last week for his monthly psych eval.

‘They do pilot _the_ Striker Eureka,’ Tendo pointed out, apparently trying to get _something_ out of him.

‘First and last of the Mark 5 series, an absolute war machine, could wreck your ass in fifteen seconds, Aussie and proud - I know the drill,’ Yancy sighed, getting out of the fighting area. ‘We fought with them in Manilla, June 2019. It was still the Lucky Seven at the time - Striker wasn’t launched until November of the same year,’ he added.

Tendo’s eyes lit up in a very, very dangerously amused way.

‘Ah-ah. So you don’t know.’

Yancy picked up his bag, not really in the mood.

‘Herc Hansen has been offered a position at, hm, the Hong-Kong Shatterdome? The one that overlooks Victoria Bay,’ Tendo hesitated for a second, his hand playing with one suspender as he slowly got up to follow Yancy out of the Combat Room.

‘You know there’s only eight ‘domes, right?’

‘Yeah, but I never remember this one... I’ve never been there,’ Tendo said, his hands deep in his pockets. ‘Mate, it’s like the _Paris_ of Shatterdomes -’

‘I know, _I know_. It can house over thirty Jaegers, six bays at full capacity, yada-yada.’

‘Sounds like a big deal,’ Yancy agreed blandly, turning off the lights and closing the door behind them. ‘Bigger than the Icebox, that’s for sure.’

Full capacity here was four, maybe five Jaegers; the old Mark 1 models could handle a few nights in the cold if they ran out of space.

‘That also means there’s an opening.”

‘Hm,’ Yancy answered, not really listening - Hercules Hansen was more than capable of being a Marshal. He was a decorated war hero, and had been one of the first pilots to enlist in the joined Australia and New Zealand Jaeger Program.

‘An opening _for a pilot_.’ Tendo insisted, but his words didn’t quite register.

Not until a few seconds had passed, first.

‘Yeah, _sure_ ,’ Yancy muttered then, his dumbfounded silence apparently hilarious. ‘Like they’d let a guy from Alaska who lost his brother and a Mark 3 put his dirty hands on their baby.’

‘Not a very nice way to talk about seventeen-year-old Ranger Chuck Hansen,’ Tendo chuckled. ‘He is a genius, man. He was born to do this - just like you. I’m pretty sure you two would make a good team -’ ‘No - fuck that kid, Tendo. Hansen is nothing like me - I had my chance, and I fucked up,’ Yancy answered icily. ‘That kid? He has his dad, and the best toy this world can offer. He’s never gonna let that go. I. Am. _Nothing_ ,’ Yancy hammered one last time, swallowing back his anger, his regrets.

Tendo raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. ‘You done yelling?’

‘I am,’ Yancy spat back him, turning around, _leaving_. He needs a fresh beer, a shower - not that bullshit.

‘The tryouts are in Sydney, in about a month - think about it, at least!’ he hears Tendo call after him.

Yancy flips him the finger without turning around or slowing down.

.

‘I thought you didn’t care,’ Tendo tells him with a smug grin, patting the space next to him on the wooden bench.

Yancy snorts, and dumps his bag on the floor. It feels a lot like going to a hockey match, with all the officials and higher-ups huddled together in one corner of the room, sharing the nicer seats while the whole ‘dome banged their feet on the metallic walkways of the bleachers.

‘Chill, Mr. Choi. I’m not participating,’ Yancy tells him, already looking around the Combat Room. He finds Pentecost easily enough, his tall frame dwarfing Hercules Hansen by a good head.

‘Wanna go say hi?’ Tendo chimes in.

‘Nah, not yet,’ Yancy says after a moment, deciding against it when Herc’s son stepped on the tatami. ‘I need to check on my cadets first.’

The Combat Room is eerily silent by the time he reaches all six of them, and one of the boys is already looking a little too green as he watches Hansen spar with the first candidate; they are using the wooden sticks Raleigh loved so much, but Chuck is not wasting any time twirling it around. He hits hard and true, seeing the whole operation more as a way to prove himself than for the opportunity it is - his father is not getting younger, and, in Yancy’s opinion, his experience would invaluable in Command.

The PPDC was rarely wrong when it came to naming its Marshals.

‘Each of you got his number?’ Yancy asks, tearing his gaze away from the fight. The referee is counting points, but it doesn’t matter - everyone can tell already that the guy on the ring won’t make it.

His cadets all nod, if a bit too gravely.

‘Remember, this isn’t about kicking his ass - it’s about compatibility,’ Yancy reminds them, feeling the need to reassure them a little when faced with Hansen’s crude jabs and hard blows. ‘Do your best - and don’t be disappointed if that’s not it. It’s not a test,’ he adds, winking, remembering how his brother and him had recklessly fought during the academy tryouts only to end up at the infirmary with a bleeding nose for him and a sprained ankle for Raleigh.

Then he hears the crowd cheer a little, and realizes that this may not quite look like it. Pentecost is sitting next to Lima’s Marshal, a woman in her late forties that looked as inflexible as he did - the Australian ambassador is there as well, accompanied by a few nerdy-looking men that could only be J-Tech scientists.

‘What do you think,’ Tendo asks him in-between bites of his food.

He is munching on onion rings, his fingers are greasy and the smell is a bit disgusting - Yancy ignores it and tries to focus on the fighting ring. Hansen has an uncomplicated style not really suited to stick fights; he’s agile, and quick on his feet, but he lacks the discipline needed to be really good at it. He looks like he’s enjoying himself, though, even if his definition of fun apparently means jabbing the end of his stick into someone else’s ribs or nose.

‘I don’t think it’s gonna be one of ours,’ Yancy sighs, sharply reminded of Oliver Higgs very green face. He doesn’t think sweet Simon is going to make it either, or that Tasha’s viciousness will be enough to match Chuck Hansen’s ruthless, yet lethal blows.

‘You are not gonna try, then,’ Tendo guesses, throwing him a sideway look.

‘Nah, not interested in getting poked at,’ he replies dismissively, all clipped words and untruths.

He had considered it when signing up his cadets for the trials. It would have been easy enough to add his name at the end of the list, and neither Pentecost nor Herc Hansen would have blinked twice at the idea of him piloting Striker Eureka; Yancy was a capable Ranger, a respected soldier and instructor. He had brought Gypsy back to shore on his own, had shouldered the weight of the drift for every single second of the two painful hours it took him to get back.

‘Not overly interested in piloting, either,’ Tendo remarks pointedly as he crumples the greasy wrapper in his hands.

Yancy grinds his teeth together. ‘We’ve talked about this already, man,’ he lets out after a moment, letting his annoyance weight the words down. ‘And who’s going to take care of you if I’m gone?’

‘Not Alison’s boyfriend,’ his friends scoffs, thankfully letting the matter go.

The next candidate is dismissed with three quick jabs to his calves, and a stronger one to his left knee - too heavy, is Yancy’s idle guess. The one after that holds his own for two or three fights, his heap of blond hair turned quickly brown by sweat - but in the end, all his resolve won’t matter. Nothing about it feels easy, there’s too much imbalance between them for it to work; it occurs to him that Chuck Hansen is probably just picky, but who wouldn’t in his shoes?

Yancy meets Pentecost's steady gaze across the room as he rises to join his cadets, down by the fighting ring; the Marshal gives him a curt, quick nod before his dark eyes turn to Herc, and then Chuck.

His cadets are lined up near the ring, Tasha ready to go next; Oliver had forfeited and the others looked at him like a frightened flock of ducklings when the fighting started. Hansen wiped clean the sweat off his brow with the hem for his shirt, revealing taut muscles, the elastic waistbands of his pants loose on his hips; maybe Yancy starred a little, but only because the younger pilot of Striker Eureka was such a show-off.

Tasha is out in less than five swings, cradling her elbow; Simon is the last to go, to pick up the stick - he is the best of his year, but Yancy knows this won’t make any difference. Chuck sidesteps a blow with the kind of easy grace that tells Yancy all about the dancing lessons at Australia’s Jaeger Academy; he disarms the cadet with a neat, practiced parade that speaks of training even though it’s painfully obvious Hansen _loathes_ the sticks.

Yancy helps Simon out of the field, claps a hand to his shoulder - ‘it doesn’t matter,’ he insists again, wishing his poor excuse of a smile could convey the feeling enough.

‘You don’t wanna try, Becket?’ Hansen sneers, pushing Simon’s stick on the floor.

It rolled and rolled and reached the front of his left boot, lightly knocking into it; Yancy stares at it blankly for a second, Tendo’s words dancing in his ears, before leveling his gaze to Chuck’s face.

His brow is glistening with sweat, and there’s a bruise blooming against his collarbone, where a Peruvian cadet had managed to touch him; his eyes are made of a clear, unadulterated blue that matched his father’s. His smile was sharp-edged, dangerous, predatory even when he asked Yancy again.

‘Pick up the stick, old man,’ Chuck insisted with a brisk nod of his chin towards the stick.

Except, no - it wasn’t Chuck he saw but Raleigh parading in Anchorage’s Combat Room, endearing, happy, _alive_.

‘I pass,’ Yancy almost snarled back, nudging the stick away with his feet and turning his back to the Australian pilot.

In the end, Chuck Hansen does not find a suitable partner, and Hercules Hansen isn’t named Marshal of the Hong-Kong Shatterdome which would remain under Chinese command until a new name was put forward.

.

The first attack of 2022 happens in January, south of Vladivostok. Russia’s eastern coastline has not been breached for two years, thanks to the joined efforts of their four residing Jaegers. The Kaiju - codename Ragefang - was pretty small for a category IV, no more than 2,200 tons. Knifehead had been bigger, stronger, but this one was a voracious orca-looking thing, swift in the water, all black and blue leathery skin. The video feed was shaky and fat droplets of rain and seawater alike were running all over the lens, courtesy of the front camera of the remaining jumphawk circling the area - there was not much to see, anyway, up until the deathblow. The Kaiju barreled into Nova Hyperion, its rows upon rows of white teeth gleaming in the moonlight as it opened its jaws wide, and cut right through the Jaeger’s right leg. The pilots, the Korean Rangers An Yuna and Pang So-Yi, managed to take it down before it crossed the Miracle Line - but not without sacrificing themselves in the process.

After they had lost to Knifehead, the attacks had not stopped - everything had gotten harder, more complicated. Their sudden inability to win without facing the Kaijus two-to-one, or heavily supported by coastal artillery and armed jumphawks, made UNO reconsider their funds' allocation. A little more when to the Coastal Wall of Life Project instead of the ‘domes. It had not really started with Nova Hyperion, but it hadn’t stopped since - Tacit Ronin got cut in half, and was left to rot in the ruins of a South Korean seaside city before the Defense Corps moved it to Oblivion Bay more than a year later. Then another, and another, and another - it was like the loop all over again, except this time it wasn’t Yancy or his brother that were dying on repeat.

The Corps started deploying the Jaegers by pairs of two - it didn’t stop a category IV Kaiju from destroying Mammoth Apostle, in Malaysia. Insurrector, in Santa Monica, managed to destroy most of the city before Striker Eureka and Hydra Corinthian killed it, poisoning most of the city’s sewers and clean water reserves with the Kaiju’s blue blood.

This would never be over.

.

The Shatterdomes are closing one by one - by the end of the year, there would be one, maybe two left. Pentecost is shutting down everything unnecessary to their survival, tirelessly redirecting the money towards the Jaeger repairs and a little team of scientists that would keep studying the Breach until they eventually managed to close it.

It makes little sense to keep training cadets, now that no new Jaeger awaits. The ‘dome he had spent so much time in with Raleigh will be closing one day as well, and that betrayal would cut _deep_ \- Yancy pushes the idea away. They still had work to do.

‘Great to see you again, Becket,’ Herc’s figure is a welcomed sight as he steps out of the jumphawk, looking a little cold and even more tired.

Their dwindling numbers had made sharing mandatory - Striker Eureka would stay around for a few months, as it was the only Jaeger still suited to one-on-one combat. It would go back to Sydney soon.

‘How have things been? Heard you got another kill,’ Yancy congratulates him, clasping his shoulder like he would with an old friend.

‘Don’t tell that to the kid,’ Herc says, offering him a tired smile. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

‘Yeah,’ Yancy agrees, chuckling good-naturedly. ‘He might get cocky.’

.

It turns out Yancy doesn’t see much of them in the next few months, partly because there were no new cadets to train, which meant no trip to the ‘dome - the PPDC had chosen to repurpose its last students’ training, which meant working extra hours and sometimes on Sundays. Most of them were being reincorporated to the army or had joined local task forces and initiatives. The Wall being one of them. And Yancy had to admit the thought was appealing enough - and maybe this was his endgame, to see it finished, to reach his own expiration date along with Pentecost, Tendo, and the Hansen duo.

But what’s happening, right now? No. It’s too soon, Yancy stubbornly decides. Tendo is settling transparent plastic tarp over the equipment in the LOCCENT control room, while Pentecost and Herc Hansen are waiting for the videoconference to start.

‘They can’t do this,’ Yancy hammers, again, caught in a whole new kind of loop.

His forehead starts throbbing painfully, and he thinks, maybe - _if I hit reset, I can stop this from happening._

‘Out, Mr. Becket,’ Pentecost orders in a commanding tone, but he can’t find it in him to obey.

‘They can’t do this’, he stressed again, feeling his skin grow cold and clammy.

The edges of his vision rearrange themselves in a quiet blur of blackness and flickering lights; the idea of survival is suddenly very absurd, and all Yancy wants is to have his brother back.

A calloused hand holds his neck in a tight grip before Yancy can bash his head on the command console in front of him; he hears sounds he knows are words, a familiar voice that’s probably Herc Hansen’s -

‘You hear me? You fucking keep breathing!’ His nails are digging in Yancy’s skin - pain makes things a little clearer, a little less cloudy, but it’s the Marshal’s strong voice that brings him back.

‘In and out, Ranger,’ Pentecost snaps at him, the video feed already up and running in front of him.

Yancy forces the air in and out, _in and out_ , and allows Tendo to walk him out of the control room before he does something really stupid. His vision is blurred and bright, a thousand shiny spots dancing in front of his eyes - the iron grip on his elbow is an anchor, and it makes the panic attack recede.

Yancy opens his eyes again to the jumphawks bay. He’s sitting in the light drizzle, and it smells of salt and motor oil - the sky is full of heavy grey clouds and the sea looks just as bleak. Tendo is sitting next to him, holding his wrist as if taking his pulse; he knows of the terror, the fear and the loss of self that had followed Raleigh’s death, but not of the dull ache of knowing this was not an end. It would begin anew, and they would all forget.

Herc Hansen is talking with Pentecost a few feet away, but not close enough that Yancy can hear their hushed whispers. Their faces are closed-off, distant even, so it’s easy to guess what had happened during the brief meeting - still, he can’t bring himself to ask.

‘Mr. Choi,’ The Marshall finally calls, loud and clear enough for Tendo to understand that he’s meant to leave them alone. Herc has already disappeared back inside, no doubt preparing his journey back to Sydney now that the Shatterdome had been officially decommissioned.

Pentecost sits next to him, and they can only watch as the tide rises; it eases Yancy’s mind after a moment, watching the waves come and go, eat away at the pier.

When he’s finally himself again, the Marshal tells him, with the kind of unwavering faith only men like him possessed, ‘We too shall rise again.’

Yancy stares into Pentecost’s dark eyes, and idly wonders what the Marshal would have done, had he been in his shoes - _more_ is the only thing that comes to mind, but it is the kind of understatement better left alone.

And then in one frantic, hopeful breath, Pentecost asks him, ‘Where would you rather die, Mr. Becket?’

.

It happens in Hong-Kong, almost five years after Raleigh dies - Yancy just gets it when he meets Mako Mori, and the empty space at her side. She tips her umbrella his way, just enough to protect him from the pouring rain if he takes a small step forward. Some of her black bangs were dyed Kaiju Blue, just to piss off her dad. Yancy respected that. She was also the Lead J-Tech Engineer for the Mark 3 Restoration Program, overviewing the process of bringing the Gypsy back to life. That girl wanted to be a part of this fight just as hard as Raleigh had wanted, back when he’d thrown the Xbox controller in Yancy’s hands ages ago. ‘Let’s do this,’ his brother had said, resolute, _sixteen_ , everything Yancy wasn’t but turned out to be.

It echoed in his heart and head with the same intensity Pentecost’s words had had - _‘Where would you rather die, Mr. Becket?’_

‘Mr. Becket?’ Mako inquires as the Marshal ignores them both to reach the entrance of the compound.

‘I’ve heard a lot about you, Mako Mori,’ Yancy tells her, finally stepping forward to shake her small hand. He did not dare speak to her with his rusty Japanese - it felt disrespectful. English would do, Yancy decided.

‘Good things, I hope,’ she avoids his gaze, uneasy; yet she’s brave enough to defy her father’s stupid interdictions. Yancy finds himself smiling softly at her, and follows her inside.

_'In here, or in a Jaeger?'_

He had made his choice long ago.

.

Mako had not modified the outer armor much - she had replaced the arm, updated most of the tech. The screens looked nicer and the painless Spinal Clamp was definitely an improvement - and oh, they had _black_ suits now.

‘We selected a few potential partners that could fit your - your fighting style,’ as Mako gently called it. ‘I’ve scheduled the tryouts for tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be there. Probably. Marshal Pentecost and some members of the active roaster will probably attend, as well...’

‘... You don’t approve.’

It is an easy enough guess.

‘ _No_ \- yes,’ she admits with a bitter sigh, biting her lower lip like a kid. ‘I don’t think we have what you need, and I am sorry,’ she explains, the frustrated look in her eyes genuine.

‘I’d like to apologize, too,’ Yancy says, ready to spill the ugly truth of the time loop to someone, _anyone_.

He wanted to tell her everything, _my brother should be here. With you, Mako. In that Jaeger. Not me_. She is twenty-two, older than Raleigh had ever been, and she had built that Jaeger for herself, as much as the Marshal wanted to deny it.

.

‘She should be the one piloting the Gypsy, and you _know_ it,’ Yancy says through his teeth to Pentecost, seething.

They would have been compatible _enough,_ even if out of pure spite. The thing is, they were both _very_ good at following direct orders - so they let it go. If Raleigh had been here - ‘ _but he isn’t_ ’, Yancy reminded himself, biting his tongue before the could say something. Not following orders had cost him enough already, and the most important thing now was not their petty disagreements, but the final phase of the Jaeger Program.

Throw a big ass bomb in the Breach, and be done with it.

For- _fucking_ -ever.

‘Is that insubordination I hear, Mr. Becket?’

Yancy swallows back his resentment and boards the Conn-Pod, waiting for the cadet to show up. His name is Nathan Lambert. He is young, all baby blue eyes and clumsy hands, has barely graduated from the Australian Academy before it was shut down. They were counting on Yancy’s extensive field experience and training to make up for his lack of knowledge - and his lack of a partner. And sure, if the Neural Handshake lasted long enough, this wouldn’t be much of a problem anymore. Plus, Yancy desperately needed the extra time to figure out a strategy against Knifehead that wouldn’t kill him or Raleigh or both of them. Especially now that the Wall of Life had proved to be nothing more than a sandcastle facing the waves of the rising tide.

‘We don’t have all day, Becket,’ Pentecost reminded him over the coms.

So yeah, Yancy really needed to suck it up, and walk.

‘Second pilot on board,’ announced the cool voice of the computer.

It still felt very wrong to do this with anyone that wasn’t his brother.

‘Hi, Mr. Becket, Sir,’ cadet Lambert said standing behind him and not at his side, a bit skittish, his blond hair tousled. He had a drop rate success of 97%, which wasn’t bad at all. He looked capable. He had performed adequately during the tryouts, proving to be level-headed and quite good at waving a stick around. But he wasn’t Raleigh or Mako - he didn’t know, and in his eyes, there was no trace of either his brother of Pentecost’s daughter resolve.

‘Hey, kid.’

They initiate the junction, and everything is fine for a few minutes - Yancy lets the memories pass through his mind, not latching on any of them, feeling even a little proud. But all there is to their link is static, white noise - there’s no rhythm, no song, and it feels like walking in undersized shoes or speaking two different languages. Yancy is sharply reminded of Chuck Hansen’s jabs, and he _understands_.

Gypsy is a familiar anchor, and he finds solace and relief in piloting her again. They perform a few routines moves, Tendo claps, as well as most of the crew. Pentecost even manages a smile. Gypsy Danger is all powered up and ready to go, again. It’s like putting his old jacket on, and waltzing through the Shatterdome corridors with Raleigh, all swagger and pride. He almost hears his voice, the low and resolute growl - but it’s muffled by cadet Lambert panicked voice.

‘Sir! He’s chasing the R.A.B.I.T.!’

‘ _Becket!_ Get your shit together!’

Suddenly they are not in Hong Kong anymore; it’s cold, and damp, and Yancy can feel his breath coming short inside the black helmet. He hears the water rushing in the breached Conn-Pod, muting all other sounds - the screens go black one by one, flickering bright red or blue and off. Yancy is not under, but he can feel every drop of salt water going into his lungs, every desperate breath rushing out; he feels all the undiluted panic of his brother, and wonders if Lambert shares that through him - the sheer agony of Raleigh and the growing desperation of Yancy with every new failed run.

_The deeper the bond, the better you fight._

‘Becket’s latched onto a memory! We need to disconnect them - or else he’s gonna kill Lambert!’

That’s how Yancy fucks up, big time - and wakes up, bleary-eyed, to the sound of blazing sirens and to the overexcited voice of his little brother.

‘Yance - _Yancy_ , wake up!’

He fucks up that one, too.


	2. at the bottom of the bottle, you're the poison in the wine

Protesting won’t make the Kaijus smaller or the Senators less bigoted; Yancy had seen it all, had tried once or twice to prove them wrong only to meet an impenetrable wall of stupidity that was way thicker than the Coastal Wall of Life would ever be. 

‘They don’t want to listen,’ he says to Pentecost before that last call, half-bitterness and half-anger.

Herc Hansen is standing right there, looking regal in his navy blue uniform with all those polished medals hanging from his chest; in that run, Yancy had managed to land a position in Command, not that it had made any difference in the end. His meteoric rise through the ranks had been impeded by budget cuts and his very vocal refusal to endorse the Anti-Kaiju Wall project.

 _That_ had contributed to make him pretty popular amongst PPDC soldiers - especially in Southern America and South-Eastern Asia, in countries such as Peru, Japan or Korea which were amongst the most invested in the Jaeger Program. China was very reluctant to let go as well, and had repeatedly called the Wall the ‘biggest lie of the decade’ and other uncertain terms such as a ‘propaganda machine’.

The US branch of the PPDC, on the other hand, had been more than happy to let the Los Angeles Shatterdome become a part of the Wall, rather than an operational military base housing their only real mean of protection.

‘And they won’t, Mr Becket,’ Pentecost told him as the screens started flickering to life, one after the other. His apparent calmness was more than a bit unnerving.

‘You know as well as I do that this was voted _before_ we even started losing, Sir,’ Yancy countered, arms crossed high on his chest. 

‘Of course he knows that,’ Herc chuckled darkly, knowing better than to argue - they all knew that. 

But they didn’t know, not really - not as Yancy did.

‘I have seen it fall three times already,’ he starts, fighting the urge to punch something. 

The words are heavy in his mouth and he instantly regrets saying them out loud - no one would ever believe him, certainly not practical men like the Marshal or Hercules Hansen. Still, Yancy keeps his voice from wavering, and decides to try. 

He looks Pentecost in the eye, resolute, feeling older than he has ever been. ‘A category IV will break through the Wall on the 1st of January, in Sydney. Striker Eureka defeats it with two good blows and a barrage of missiles. I’ve seen it,’ Yancy insists, ‘because I’ve been reliving the same days, the same months and years, for a very long time now.’

Pentecost searches his eyes, but he’ll find no lie - it’s the ugly truth. He’s stuck in a time loop. The screens behind the Marshall continue to flicker on - it’s almost time. He gets his pillbox out, slips one on his tongue, and shares a long look with Herc. 

‘We’ll talk again in January, then,’ Pentecost decides, his tone betraying nothing. 

He turns back to stare at the screens, leaving Yancy gapping at him, open-mouthed and ridiculous; Pentecost and Hansen conduct their meeting, often in disagreement with the decisions, but they never yell. The higher ups don’t change their minds - the whole scene is so eerily identical that Yancy wonders if he shouldn’t do the voice over, just to prove them he isn’t crazy. Instead, he just storms off as soon as the US Senator opens his mouth to say that they have eight months of funding left. 

.

‘Talk,’ Pentecost demands, dragging a chair next to him and sitting backwards on it. Herc seems very happy with standing in the corner of Yancy’s room, looking vaguely threatening with his arms crossed. 

Yancy was looking at the last picture he took with his brother - they’re both smiling like idiots, wearing their identical Gypsy jackets, with that first Kaiju head printed on the front. Their first confirmed killed, almost as satisfying as a good fuck.

‘Good morning to you too, Marshal, Herc’,’ Yancy salutes them with a smile, unable to hide his glee. 

This was fucking hilarious, _come on_.

‘You said _three_ times, son,’ Herc reminds him abruptly, his brow furrowed in an expression bordering on anxious.

‘Fourth, now,’ Yancy agrees, looking very pleased with himself. ‘That dear old Mutavore, always right on time...’

‘Why didn’t you tell us earlier?’

Yancy eyes Herc warily. ‘Because last time I told you _earlier_ , and you punched me really hard in the face - nice right hook, by the way, but I’d rather not repeat the experience. I gave as good as I got, and you ended up with a fucked-up ankle. Mutavore destroyed roughly a third of Sydney before the Wang brothers got him.’

Yancy had never quite managed to find the right timing - who would have listened to him anyway, a retired fucked-up pilot teaching tricks and stick fighting at the Academy? He had no influence to speak of, and never bothered building it up before this very run. 

‘So why now?’ Pentecost asks him, expressionless, unfathomable.

Yancy hesitates for a few seconds, watching the Marshal and Herc’s faces - not doubting him, not questioning anything. Maybe pursuing a career this time around had been a good call. So he lies a little, but what he says bear enough of the truth to sound plausible.

‘Because before, you were never desperate enough to listen. And neither was I,’ Yancy adds bitterly.

‘Sounds fair,’ Herc admits after sharing a brief look with Pentecost.

The Marshal slowly turns back to Yancy, a fat droplet of blood staining the dark skin under his nose. The pillbox is out as fast as his usual handkerchief, and everything is cleaned up in such a calmed, controlled gesture that Yancy can’t help but admire this man, and his unwavering faith that they’d make it. 

_We too shall rise again._

‘What happens next?’ Herc finally asks, his arms no longer crossed; his hands are deep in his pockets, and he’s slightly leaning on the wall.

‘It depends,’ Yancy answers, unsure of what exactly he should tell them. Remaining cryptic wouldn’t help at all, but confirming the double-event might give them some time - and even after multiple five years, Yancy always found himself running out of it. 

‘Well?’ Pentecost presses him, his fingers drumming on the back of the chair.

‘Give me a minute,’ he asks, _begs_ , getting up, walking around as much as he could in his small room; the picture of him and his brother is lying abandoned on his bed, with a bunch of others.

Yancy thinks it through, as thoroughly as he can.

‘I’ve done this a few times,’ he says after a moment, sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘Mako restored the Gypsy, and I’m supposed to pilot it. You asked me, Marshal, where I’d rather die - here,’ Yancy repeats, pointing at the sturdy concrete walls, ‘or in a Jager.’

Herc laughs a little, but promptly shuts up when Pentecost throws him A Look, right above his shoulder.

‘I’ve made that choice long ago, so I said yes every time you’ve asked me - every single fucking time. But I’ve never managed to convince you that Mako should ride with me,’ Yancy admits, not daring to meet Pentecost’s dark eyes. ‘I’m not even sure we’d be compatible enough. I settled for a cadet once - Nathan Lambert - and I killed us both during the test phase.’

 _Again_ , Pentecost and Hansen share a long, pointed look.

‘What do you need, Mr Becket?’

‘I need you to let Mako pilot Gypsy Danger, with or without me. Sir,’ he puts in respectfully.

‘... I cannot promise you this,’ Pentecost answers, unblinking, but with his usual reluctance at the thought of Mako piloting. ‘What else?’

‘If Mako can’t ride shotgun with me, then - I need a way to win against Knifehead, five years ago,’ came Yancy’s immediate answer. _So I can bring my brother with me._ ‘So we can keep defending the Miracle Mile, up until the moment we can’t anymore. We join you here, in Hong Kong, and we get that fucking bomb into the Breach. Geizsler figures it all out with the help of Gottlieb, but we’ve never been strong enough to make it work.’

‘Well _that’s_ good to hear,’ Herc said sarcastically. ‘Hard to believe those two could ever agree on anything…’

Pentecost doesn’t look quite as satisfied.

‘What about you, Mr Becket?’

Yancy doesn’t know whether he’s asking about the loop or something else - namely, Mako’s role in all this if both Becket brothers were still alive to pilot Gypsy. Pentecost isn’t stupid, he has probably guessed already that this was Yancy’s plan, so he goes for the former.

‘I’ve discussed this with Newt - Dr Geizsler - already, and uh, the Breach may or may not be the cause of what’s happening, no way to be sure until we try, yada-yada. So I’d like to try destroying the Breach, Sir,’ Yancy feverishly tells him, holding his gaze for a few seconds.

He had lived through enough five years to know they needed more of everything - and that the few fixed points he couldn’t fix by himself were only waiting for his brother to show... But who knew if that would ever happen? For all his apparent calm and experience, Yancy had never managed to make them _both_ survive Knifehead. 

‘I will help you as much as I can, until we finally drop that bomb in the Breach,’ he promises, for himself and the whole world alike - he can’t risk this one chance for one man.

Still, Yancy feels like he should.

‘I think we can give you that, Ranger,’ Pentecost answers, his eyes suddenly lit by something akin to pride. ‘Report to the simulation room within the next two hours.’

. 

‘ _BECKET!_ What _the fuck_ happens _now_?!’

He’s standing just behind Tendo, hunched over the console commands; the mic is on, and all lines are open - but it isn’t Herc’s voice demanding answers, it’s his jackass of a son. 

‘You wait, that’s what happens,’ _shithead_ , Yancy keeps for himself, watching anxiously the two Kaiju signatures getting closer and closer to the bay. The alarms had rung already, and Yancy had watched, a bit mesmerized, the neat and organized way everyone ran to the shelters, dropping everything but never in an outright panic. As always, the Buena Kai cultists would meet at their temple with their silly hats and they’d pray their Kaiju gods for a fast ending. 

Then, it crosses Yancy’s mind that Chuck probably knows too - thanks to the Drift, or because his dad wouldn’t hide something that big from him, not when it could hinder their capacity to pilot and in turn, the lives of the thousands people living in Hong Kong.

 _‘Becket_ ,’ it’s Herc who’s insisting, now; Yancy can’t help but look at the Marshal, wondering what the hell he should do. He had already told them about the double-event, about Newt figuring it all out. What more could he do? 

‘I think you should leave, Mr Becket.’

Pentecost is staring at him, as is Tendo and a good half of LOCCENT. Yancy shudders - his breathing is uneven, coming short, and he’s suddenly very cold. 

‘Leave,’ the Marshal insists, and at the sound of his commanding voice Yancy almost jogs out of the control room, terrified - he can’t be here and do nothing, he just can’t. Not now that they, too, know - it’s like watching his brother die all over again, and he won’t have it. He looks Pentecost dead in the eye, defiant, and grabs the old school microphone Tendo always insists on using.

‘Yance, what the fuck are you doing -’

‘Give me that,’ he says, pushing Tendo’s chair a bit to the left, opening the line with Striker Eureka, Cherno Alpha, and Crimson Typhoon. ‘You don’t stand back here Striker, you go with them. Fucking _now_!’ Yancy yells at them through the com, watching the green Kaiju dots move fast on the screen. 

There’s silence at first, and for a long second Yancy wonders if he didn’t just gloriously fuck up.

‘Roger that,’ comes the overly excited voice of Chuck Hansen.

‘Otachi can spit acid, so you cut his head off the first occasion you get - Leatherback is slower, you have maybe fifteen minutes before he is on you,’ Yancy goes on, his eyes on the red and green dots moving on the screens. It looks like a fucking video game - Pentecost pushes a chair under his knees, and his big hand clasps his shoulder just like it did at the funeral, years - _decades -_ ago.

Yancy looks up at him, and the slight nod the Marshal gives him is _enough_.

‘Alright, let’s do this,’ he whispers in the mic, more for himself than any of the pilots listening.

The absence of his brother burns like it always does when there’s a battle - they need the Gypsy here, _now_ , not necessarily with him inside. He sees Mako standing on the sidelines, anxiously watching the screens - she grew up in one of those ‘domes, too, along with Chuck Hansen who won’t take no for an answer.

‘His tail is a claw, careful with it!’ 

‘We got that,’ the Russians yell right back, holding it down with both hands; Cherno was heavy enough to stop it from moving until Striker got a few good blows in. 

‘Typhoon, cut it - cut it now!’ They heard Herc yell at the Wei Tang brothers in his broken mandarin, earning a light whistle from his son.

They manage to cut its head clean off in less than ten minutes, which is better than last time -

(Leatherback had managed to detonate the EMP-like weapon on his back, effectively paralyzing Striker Eureka and Crimson Typhoon - the triplets had died quick, crushed by Otachi’s claw, and, feeling the need to do _something_ , Herc had disengaged too early and gotten his arm in a sling. Cherno Alpha had been left miraculously untouched, a one-time thing, probably because the Jaeger had been elbow deep in the Kaiju at the time of the electric detonation. The Kaidanovskys had managed to kill it, after that, bashing his skull until it cracked open. Otachi had been brought down by a battery of Anti-Kaiju Missiles, which had destroyed a good third of the harbor in the process.

Yancy had been asked to remain behind, along with Mako. Pentecost had entrusted him and Hercules with Hong-Kong safety, and his permission to deploy Gypsy should the need arise - and this strong, unyielding man had towered above him, taller and thicker than the Coastal Wall would ever be, his American accent heavy but the Japanese words all the more strong for it. 

‘I’ll leave the rest to you.’

It had been a failure, even with Cherno walking the ocean’s floor along with Striker.)

\- a thousand times better, even.

‘Don’t get cocky,’ Yancy tells them as he hears them cheering over the coms. ‘Leatherback has an EMP-like weapon on his back. You need to kill him before he gets the change to fire it, or we’re screwed,’ he went on, keeping his voice steady and resolute, like he’s heard the Marshal and Tendo do so often over the years.

Mako is watching the bay of Victoria Harbour, too, quiet and observing; ‘You’re surprisingly good at this,’ she tells him when Cherno Alpha rips off Leatherback makeshift weapon and throws it into the raging sea.

Pentecost never leaves his side, hunched over his shoulder, yelling his own orders in-between Yancy’s calls, but soon they don’t need to say anything - the Jaegers are doing a damn good job on their own. They watch, mesmerized, as Striker Eureka fires a missile barrage right into the soft skin of Leatherback’s belly, ripping its ribcage open; Cherno Alpha throws its fist into the skies, victorious, while the triplets _laugh_.

‘Bring back the heads to the Shatterdome,’ Pentecost orders as Yancy finally relaxes in his chair, relief and hope washing over him. ‘Good work, Mr. Becket,’ the Marshal says to him before heading off to the Jaeger bay. 

‘Thank you, Sir,’ he hears himself reply, but his answer is lost as LOCCENT erupts with joy. 

. 

Nobody asks him how he knew - Yancy suspects the Marshal did something about that, and he’s very thankful for the short two hours of tranquility that bought him. 

‘Hey, Becket!’ 

Because of _fucking_ course, Chuck Hansen can’t keep his big mouth shut. He’s been banging against his door for a solid minute, and probably won’t stop until Yancy opens it. 

‘That you, Hansen?’ 

‘Who else,’ Chuck chuckles darkly, his voice a bit muffled by the thick door. ‘You ain’t got many friends, dude,’ he adds, as cocky as always. ‘I wasn’t under the impression that we were friends,’ Yancy replies, opening the heavy metallic door.

Chuck is standing there, a tiny bit of awkwardness showing through his usual persona of bravado and pride. His hair is still damp from his shower and there’s a small cut on his cheek. For a second he really looks like a kid - he’s wearing his Striker leather jacket over a simple black shirt, tags gleaming under the neon lights. 

He is fidgeting with Max’s leash when he asks, ‘You wanna, uh, go grab something to eat?’

Yancy can’t help but smile, leaning on his doorstep, trying not to look too pleased. ‘Sure, Hansen boy. I just hope that I’m not, you know, too old for you,’ he adds before grabbing a sweater and heading out. 

‘I can manage,’ Chuck answers with a small smile, walking a few steps in front of him towards the elevator.

There’s a fresh eleventh Kaiju head painted on his back. ‘Gonna make it twelve before we end this, you think?’ 

Chuck laughs, finally stopping before the elevator doors. ‘If you got any other tricks like this one up your sleeve, then sure,’ he drawls, pushing the button. ‘You do, right?’

‘All out of cards, I’m afraid,’ Yancy tells him, patting his sleeves as he steps inside the elevator.

‘Oh come on,’ Chuck whined before following him inside. ‘Please tell me you’re not gonna start spilling all that crap about not changing the future,’ he adds quickly, punching the refectory floor button.

‘Nah, not gonna do that.’

‘Sweet,’ chimed Chuck, reaching down to pet Max.

Stepping out of the elevator when they reach the refectory floor, Yancy wonders where this is all leading him - in the previous runs, they had never been close friends, if friends at all. Herc respected him enough to keep his son’s barking at a minimum, especially in the one run where Yancy had managed to bring the Gypsy back to shore on his own. Since that usually ended up with him dead or crippled for life, Yancy didn’t get to see that often. The jumphawk rescue was a lot more safer, if they got to him in time.

‘I’m serious about the ‘out of cards’ part, though,’ Yancy faltered as they entered the relatively empty refectory. It was about three in the morning, so most of the personnel had gone to bed. Except the technical units who were still working on repairs - there was always something to work on. The cooking staff was always up, by choice.

Chuck throws him a sideway glance, picking up an empty tray and putting all sort of stuff on it - fruits, leftover meatloaf, what looked a lot like peanut chocolate bars, and a cup of chicken-flavored instant noodle soup. Yancy ends up getting beans, and those damn good roasted potatoes they usually served only on Sundays. He decides to try the noodles as well. If all of this ends tomorrow, he’d rather have a nice meal before going back to the Knifehead shit show. Chuck walks him to his usual table, empty at this hour; he carefully deposits his very full tray on it, and notices something that makes him frown.

‘Fucking forgot the glasses,’ he mutters before jogging back to the serving area, Max trotting behind him. 

‘You know,’ Yancy starts when Chuck finally sits back with two full glasses and two pitchers, one full of steaming hot water for the noodles, ‘I could get used to this.’

‘What,’ Chuck barks at him, slowly peeling off the lid of his cup.

‘This,’ he insists, pointing his fork right at him when Chuck moved on to open _Yancy’s_ cup. ‘I’m old but I can still eat by myself, you know,’ Yancy added, chuckling. 

Chuck’s steely blue eyes meet his over their shared meal. 

‘Don’t mention it, okay,’ he retorts with a groan. ‘I’m just trying to be nice, you saved my life and shit,’ Chuck tries to explain himself, already pouring the steaming water into both their cups; then, he slowly pushed one towards Yancy, daring him to say anything.

‘And shit,’ Yancy repeats mockingly, swallowing a mouthful of beans and potatoes.

‘It’s been a while since those people had seen such a victory, you know? Yeah, of course you know,’ Chuck snickers at him, but not in a mean way - which was kinda surprising, given his usual demeanor.

‘It’s the first time it goes so well,’ Yancy admits in-between bites. ‘Last time, your dad disengaged - after Leatherback’s EMP attack - and he had his arm in a sling. You had to ride shotgun with Pentecost.’

Maybe he shouldn’t have told him all this, but the dumbfounded expression on Hansen’s face made it really, really worth it.

‘Okay. That was unexpected.’ 

‘Yeah, nobody was ready to see him come down to the bay, all suited up,’ Yancy scoffs, blowing some steam off the cup. ‘He is one hell of a man, Pentecost.’

‘Dad always says he is the perfect man for the job,’ Chuck agreed, shoving some meatloaf in his mouth. ‘But what happened after? I mean, you being here tells me it was a fail, but - I’m kinda curious.’

The words left Yancy’s mouth before he could stop himself.

‘I usually don’t get that far.’

‘But you do it all. Again? Every time?’

‘Nothing else to do,’ Yancy mutters.

‘That’s brave. I’m serious man, don’t look at me like this,’ Chuck insists, his glass in one hand. Looking at him chug it all in one go, Yancy really wished they had beer instead of water. Pentecost had never allowed it in Anchorage, so Hong Kong probably had the same no alcohol policy. 

‘I feel like a madman sometimes,’ Yancy admits, moving the potatoes around with his fork. ‘But I think I’ve figured it out - or most of it, anyway.’

‘The time loop thing?’

‘Yeah. I’m going to sit this one around, see how things go.’

Chuck remains silent for a while, after that; up until Yancy burns his tongue on the noodles.

‘That tells me this is the first we have this discussion - you won’t make that mistake twice, trust me,’ he assured him, laughing it off. 

‘I hope the fuck not,’ Yancy snarls back at him. 

They laugh some more, talk about the many alternate realities Yancy experienced - the one where he fucked up, with Cadet Lambert; the one where Chuck and Pentecost got into Striker Eureka together and used the nuclear warhead to kill Scunner and damage Slattern, sacrificing themselves in the process. The one where Yancy had to kill himself before Otachi could get to him - he had learned not to tell Newt, after that. The scientist had helped him enough, as had Hermann, but his repeated choice to drift with a Kaiju brain had led Yancy to become a lot more careful around him. 

‘And you’ve tried how many paths? Obviously, a lot,’ Chuck says before Yancy can say anything.

He had dragged Max up on the bench a few questions ago, and was feeding him his leftovers. 

‘You’d be surprised at how few possibilities I actually have. Most of my runs end pretty much at the same place - Hong Kong. I’ve gotten better at some things, sure, but I’m not enough to make a difference. I need my brother,’ he confessed, his voice all shaky. ‘And until I can save his sorry ass and bring him here with me, I’m not done.’

Chuck just looked at him for a moment, lost in thoughts.

‘Next time,’ the younger pilot finally says, ‘you should tell us again. About those two fuckers in the bay.’

‘I will,’ Yancy agrees, sharing a small, knowing smile with Chuck. 

They share a few more jokes, he gets to pet Max who drools all over his leg. That apparently means he likes him, or so Chuck tells Yancy. It’s nice, to finally be able to talk to someone about this, without anger or resentment or the feeling that he should have drowned with Raleigh in the carcass of the Gypsy. Sure, he had spoken to Pentecost and Herc about it, had told them all he could but it wasn’t the same - they had not asked about ridiculous details, about the many different ways things had gone.

They are still going at it, bouncing shitty jokes and memories when Yancy reaches his door - and it feels wrong, somehow, to end it there. 

‘That’s your stop, Becket.’

‘Yeah. Big day tomorrow. Better sleep while we can,’ Yancy chuckled, closing the door behind him. ‘See ya, Hansen.’

He sits on his bed, surrounded by the dozens of pictures he’s brought here with him; the ones with his brother, the ones with his parents, the ones with him Raleigh and Jazmine, their toothy innocent grins - he could remember a time before the Breach, Raley too, but it had always been a little blurry for their sister. Maybe it was too for Mako and Chuck, who’d both grown up inside a Shatterdome and surrounded by pilots.

 _Maybe_.

Yancy’s out of his room before realizing fully what he is about to do; but it isn’t hard to catch up with Chuck who basically stops walking every time Max does to sniff at something. 

‘Hey, Hansen, wait,’ Yancy calls after him in the empty hallway. ‘I, uh - I got this stash of old beer, might not be good but I figured we could, _you know_ ,’ he stammers, feeling like an idiot.

‘Sure,’ Chuck blurts right back, his hands full of Max’s leash who’s just sitting there, his tongue hanging out of his mouth. 

.

‘I’ve always wondered why you never picked up the stick, during the tryouts.’

Yancy almost chokes on his beer. ‘What?’

Chuck bursts out laughing, ‘Breathe, man,’ he says, his hand clapping his shoulder. ‘You alright?’

That would have been a very, very shitty way to die.

‘Yeah, yeah - fucking stop that,’ he says, gently batting away Hansen’s hand from his shoulder. 

Max is sleeping between them, rolled on his side; he’s snoring a little. Hard day.

‘In Sydney, you mean?’

‘Yeah, where else,’ Chuck answers, gulping a mouthful of beer, and then eyeing the discolored label. ‘This,’ he declares, ‘is not as bad as I thought it’d be. Not that I’m allowed to drink.’

‘Daddy won’t let you?’

‘Never really had the time to,’ Chuck answers, shrugging. 

Their legs are dangling from the catwalk at the top of the launch bay; its large doors are opened, letting in the cool night air - the smell of the ocean on this side of the Pacific is sharper, somehow. Almost metallic.

‘I’m not sure I could do it again,’ Yancy finally says, finding it hard to properly articulate his thoughts. ‘Drift with someone else. Sure, I did it on my past runs - with that cadet. It felt - not enough? Too much.’

He had never been able to put words on that oddly specific feeling - it just felt _wrong_. 

‘That, my friend, is because you were not drift compatible.’

‘We were,’ Yancy counters coldly. 

‘No,’ Chuck insisted, his voice slurring a little. ‘What you described? That thing, like an itch you can’t scratch? That’s the low compatibility. Sure, it works _enough_ ,’ Chuck easily agrees, nodding but never quite meeting his eyes, ‘but not enough to be comfortable.’

Yancy doesn’t answer, just takes a sip. The beer is lukewarm, not fuzzy anymore - it’s not bad, but not the best he’s had. 

‘There’s also the fact that you are probably low-key looking for the exact same thing you had with your brother,’ Hansen adds, thoughtful. ‘That’s never going to happen again, not if he’s dead in that run - and even if he was alive. Every pair is unique. The drift is shitty like that, eh... You never thought about piloting again, but with a new partner? I get the necessity of the cadet, but...’

‘Nope,’ Yancy said sharply, inhaling through his nose, his eyes trained on the horizon. The sun would be up soon. 

‘And that’s why you didn’t take the stick,’ Chuck finally understands, apparently finding it a good enough excuse.

‘That, and I’m not really a fan of babysitting.’ 

The joke made them both chuckle a little - it had been two or three years, but it felt like centuries ago.

‘I kinda wanted you to,’ Chuck confesses, scratching behind Max’s hears. 

Yancy almost chokes on his beer, _again_.

‘Fucking hell,’ he mutters, coughing like an idiot. ‘There’s no way we are compatible, Hansen. No fucking way,’ Yancy stammers, taking one last sip out of his now empty bottle. 

‘Why the fuck not?!’ Chuck shouts him, looking really offended. 

‘You are a jerk, that’s why.’

‘A good-looking jerk, at least,’ comes the easy, cocky reply. And then, after a few seconds, ‘we should settle that with a stick fight. Come on, old man!’

And with that, Chuck just stands up and drags him along with him, leaving their empty bottles on the catwalk. Max is more than happy to follow, his leash trailing behind him. 

.

‘This isn’t right,’ Yancy says, laying on his back in the Kwoon Combat Room.

‘You’re rusty, is all,’ Chuck nags at him, gently poking him in the ribs with his stick.

‘You fell on your ass too, you stupid kid,’ he reminds him, batting the stick away from his ribcage. 

They had not really fought - it was more of a mock fight, if you asked Yancy, who had wave the stick with no real intent to fight or bruise, not like Chuck who had exploited every opening and used every opportunity to knock him on his ass. Yancy told himself it wouldn’t be good to cripple Chuck Hansen right before a big mission, anyway. Herc would kill him. And let’s not mention Pentecost. Not that dying meant anything anymore, but Yancy would like to enjoy a few good nights of sleep before going back to his brother (and Knifehead).

‘My brother loved the stick fights,’ Yancy hears himself say, a bit breathlessly, watching the ceiling and its coiled metallic pipes. 

‘Not your thing?’

‘Does not mean I’m bad at it, though,’ he adds, opening an eye to see Hansen join him. 

There are just laying down like idiots in the Combat Room - but one of them was a good looking idiot, at least.

‘Maybe next time, you should just take the fucking stick.’

‘Maybe next time, I will take the fucking stick,’ Yancy answers him, smiling in spite of himself.

Then Max ruins it by licking his face.

‘That’s disgusting,’ Yancy hisses, hastily pushing the dog away from him.

‘That’s _love_ ,’ Chucks murmurs fondly, letting Max settle his big head against his cheek. He sighed in contentment, his blue eyes still trained on the ceiling, and Yancy thought that maybe, he should really give it a go next time.

Mammoth Apostle might survive Santa Monica and Insurrector, for once. Maybe Herc and Pentecost would manage to salvage more Jaegers, between the two of them occupying leadership positions. 

_Maybe maybe maybe maybe_

‘So that’s the big plan,’ Chuck says, interrupting his thoughts. ‘You get your brother to meet Mako, they pilot the Gypsy, we all drop that bomb into the Breach and kiss the invaders goodbye. But what about you?’

A tiny bead of sweat runs down his forehead; he had not given it much thought. 

‘Hell if I know,’ Yancy breathes out. 

.

In the end, the Gypsy stays in the bay - Pentecost is not willing to risk Mako or a cadet, neither is he willing to expose Yancy to the Breach, now that he knows. Plus, they have three fully functional Jaegers this time around, their crews still riding the high of their recent victory - Tendo is supervising the drop of the three Jaegers near the Breach. A two and a half hour flight if the sky stays clear. 

They were leaving in less than an hour, already all suited up and waiting in the bay.

‘What changed?’ Pentecost suddenly asks him as they are taking the elevator down to the bay - probably one last big talk, like the ones Yancy had heard before. _Today we are canceling the Apocalypse._

Except they never do.

‘I owed it to you to try,’ came the genuine answer. ‘I live, I die, I live again - but what happens in all those runs where I didn’t make it? Do you win?’

‘No one has the answer to that question, I’m afraid… How many more futures until you are left in peace?’

‘Not many, I hope,’ Yancy said with a tired sigh. 

They are his best shot at getting that bomb into the Breach and end this fucking circle once and for all - he has all the players, he just needs to put them on the right squares. The one thing missing was always his brother - Gypsy Danger was supposed to carry out the mission, too, and hopefully come back alive. Telling Pentecost about the loop had had that unexpected, displeasing outcome : he was not willing to risk Yancy, so Gypsy would remain here, unused. 

Or maybe reading to be used again, should this final mission fail. 

With a loud screech, the elevator door opened to the utter chaos that was the bay; everyone seemed to be here, all eyes on Pentecost before he’d even started talking. Yancy stayed behind, just quietly stepping out of the elevator and letting its door close behind him. 

Chuck is standing there with Herc, looking regal in their armor, helmets under their arms; it’s the first time Yancy sees the Wei Tang brothers _and_ Sasha and Aleksis here, and he feels kinda proud about that. Telling Herc and Pentecost had been the good call - even if Yancy did not dare hope it would make any difference.

And in the impossible eventuality that it worked… Maybe he could stick around a little, see how things went. Maybe the loop would end - and Yancy would finally be free.

Chuck meets his eyes through the gathered crowd, and the little shit _winks_ at him. Herc notices and immediately elbows him in the ribs, ever the conscientious soldier. The crowd quickly dissolves after Pentecost finished his speech, earning himself a long applause as he stepped down his makeshift stage with a handkerchief pressed to his bleeding nose.

‘Feeew, for a second I thought he was gonna go full Lord of the Rings on us,’ a very familiar someone half-complained near him.

‘I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me,’ Yancy finds himself reciting, impersonating Viggo Mortensen’s strong voice, having seen the movie more than once with Jazmine and Raleigh. Their sister would always skip most of the movie, not finding any interest in Frodo and Sam’s quest through Mordor - if you asked her, the other parts were much more interesting. The Black Gate speech was one of her favorite, and she used to quote it to her brothers when their parents would make them eat vegetables or do their chores.

‘A day may come when the courage of men fails, bla bla bla,’ Chuck continues, louder, badly hiding the tremors in his voice.

‘Never would have taken you for a Tolkien nerd, Hansen,’ Yancy chuckles, noticing how he careful he was not to meet his eyes.

‘Takes one to know one,’ he retorts, sounding more than a bit bitter. ‘This is goodbye, then?’ Chuck says, meeting his eyes.

They were backed up near the elevator door, everyone rushing around them to get to their stations; not far away, Herc was talking with Pentecost, Mako at his side. The other pilots had already left.

‘I will remember you,’ Yancy tells him, genuine, clasping a hand on his shoulder; it was easy to forget that Herc’s son was not even twenty-three, that here was an eight year gap between them. It made this promise sound all the more hollow.

‘Don’t you go just yet, Becket,’ Chuck snickers at him, hiding whatever that was he really felt; his mouth could spun lies, but the fire in his blue eyes was true. He steps closer to him, leaning in his space, and whispers, ‘We might surprise you.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Yancy whispers back, feeling his breathing accelerate. 

If there was ever a moment for this, it was now - Chuck’s lips parted slightly and his hand reached for Yancy’s belt, hooking his fingers at the buckle. They stayed suspended at each others mouths like gaping fishes for a second, two big idiots with their lips brushing against each other’s but not quite touching yet, until Yancy finally gave in.

It was short - _it has to be_ , Yancy forced himself to think, his palms up against Chuck’s armored torso but already reaching for his neck, his face; he thought about the words he had said to a younger Mako, so long ago, _if you could do it all again, would you do it all the same?_

The audible thump of the helmet falling unceremoniously on the floor probably got everybody’s eyes on them, but in this lifetime this was all they would ever get; a quick, heated kiss in the corner of a crowded room, full of impossible promises.

‘Yeah, I hope you remember me, Yancy,’ Chuck whispers to him, having a hard time to let go. 

‘One nerd to another: a day may come, but it is not this day,’ Yancy says after a moment, pushing his forehead against Chuck’s; he can feel their shared breaths against his heated lips, Chuck’s gloved hands tugging at his hips just to get a little closer, a little longer. ‘It is not this day,’ he repeats, louder, letting him go.

Chuck picks up his helmet, walking back to his dad, to Striker Eureka, to their shared duty to the world; he doesn’t look back, and Yancy is glad of it, because whatever this is, he wouldn’t be able to muster the courage to let go a second time. 

His own words play on a loop in his head - _if you could do it all again, would you do it all the same?_ \- and merge with what Chuck had told him the night before as they were drinking beer, his easy confession, the absolute certitude of it - _I kinda wanted you to._

Maybe next time, he would. 

.

There’s a gun stashed in his room - he’s learnt the hard way that dying slowly under the debris of the Shatterdome? Not fun. Yancy is rolling the slick, black weapon in his hands, its cool metal now lukewarm; he has retreated back to his room, unable to watch as the Jaegers were slowly carried to the Breach by dozens of jumphawks.

‘Hey,’ Tendo whispers, passing his head through the door. ‘You okay?’

Then he saw the gun. 

‘It’s not loaded,’ Yancy blurts immediately, showing him the empty magazine. He had taken the bullets out, to avoid the temptation of an easy ending. ‘It’s just - I’d rather end it quick, if it ever comes to that.’

Tendo looks at him, blood draining from his face. In this run, too, they had been good friends - the best of friends. Yancy vividly remembers all the late nights, their easy banter going back and forth at the bar, through the coms, after a rough day of training, with or without Raleigh, in this life and in every other. 

Nearing what he had started to call the End as an ironic joke, Yancy could feel the pull of his brother grow eerily stronger - calling him back, back to the start. He hears Tendo’s heavy sigh as his friend settles near him on the bed, hunched forward, resolutely not looking at the weapon in Yancy’s hands. 

The gun is gleaming under the neon lights, both a promise and a curse. 

‘Tell me you won’t do that,’ he asks after a moment, his bloodshot eyes staring at it.

‘I won’t,’ came Yancy’s immediate answer, too spontaneous to be true. 

Tendo’s short, humorless laugh resonates in the small room. ‘Liar.’

‘Yeah.’ Yancy accepts the accusation, opening the drawer of his desk and putting the gun back inside. He can’t do much else, anyway.

‘You don’t need to. Not this time,’ Tendo continues with a coaxing voice, bordering on fanatic. ‘Wait until they deliver the bomb, at least -’

‘They never come back.’

Yancy feels his voice waver; his throat is tight, and for a while after that he has a hard time breathing. 

‘They just never do,’ he insists, trying to sound resolute, _hardened_. Trying to be like their father had been, when their mother had died; when he had said to Yancy, Raleigh and Jazmine ‘everything is going to be alright’, except nothing ever was again. 

And then, he had left them.

‘You don’t know that, Yance -’

‘I _fucking_ do,’ Yancy mutters, clenching his fists, fighting through his anger. ‘It starts with Raleigh, and then it’s all the pilots - and it always ends here. Fucking here, with Striker Eureka going to the Breach and sometimes with Gypsy riding shotgun. And they fail. Every. Single. Time.’

His words are met with a familiar kind of silence; _acceptance_.

‘Hansen will come back for your ass,’ his so-called friend whispers to him with a shit-eating grin, making him laugh in a light-hearted way. ‘I’m serious, Becket. That boy, he’s had a crush on you for _years_.’

‘Not really sure of that,’ he answers, shrugging but smiling anyway - _I kinda wanted you to._

‘I shit you not,’ Tendo insisted immediately, not buying a word of Yancy’s dismissal. ‘What’s the point of reliving the same life over and over again if you can’t at least fuck your way around?’

‘He’s a kid for most of those years.’

‘He was never a kid, Yance,’ Tendo tempers. ‘The guy basically grew up in his dad’s head. That’s all he ever saw in this short life of his.’

‘... Did he put you up to this?’

‘May-be,’ his self-proclaimed friend answers playfully.

Tendo reaches for his hand, and he holds onto it tightly.

Chuck dies anyway.

.

Yancy does not survive the next two runs; in the third one, he manages to keep his right leg but limps his way around for a few months before he’s had enough. He hangs himself in his bathroom, and it is a slow, painful, agonizing death - it’s everything he needs. The few next runs pass in a blurr, until he wakes up to the familiar white walls of the infirmary room. 

_I kinda wanted you too._

Yancy has been helpless before, but never like this - never this useless, this empty. Nothing has meaning anymore, certainly not the Jaeger Program. Three Jaegers had not managed to close the Breach - Herc and Chuck had detonated the bomb, taking down the category V, ending their lives in the process. The escape pods were jammed, as they always were.

The day he’s released, Yancy quits, and goes to help building the equally useless Anti-Kaiju Wall. 


End file.
